Religious Life in the Dominican Order

In July of 1936, I entered the Novitiate of the Dominican Fathers at St. Hyacinthe, in Canada, and the 3rd of August, I received the habit of the Order. My novitiate was a marvelous year under the wise direction of Fr. Emile-Alphonse Langlais.

Father Langlais took charge of the formation of Novices at the age of 64, after rendering important services to our Province. Twice he had been elected Provincial. In 1915, he became the first Canadian to hold this office. During his second term, he founded our mission in Japan, at the request of Rome, and had the novices say daily prayers for that difficult mission.

Father Langlais was a rather austere man. He believed in the traditional monastic observances of the Order, and practiced what he preached to others. He was intelligent and serious. He was joyous, if not exuberant. Those who knew him as a young Provincial thought he was severe, but later, as Master of Novices, we thought he was most kind, gentle and affectionate, even "maternal." On one point he was intransigent: religious obedience. Life at the novitiate was both austere and joyous.

Reflecting later on my experience of life at the novitiate, I greatly admired the pedagogy of Father Langlais. He sought always to motivate us rather than command us. In his spiritual conferences, he described our Dominican life and ideal with such appeal that we just wanted to live it. With that approach, there was no need for him to act as a prefect of discipline, but rather as a spiritual guide. In such a context, life at the novitiate was joyous, in the true Dominican tradition.

During my novitiate, I was led by God to read little books of spirituality that centered my spiritual life squarely on God rather than on good moral behavior. Several such books were written by Father Piny, a Dominican of the 17th century. All extol holy abandonment to the will of God as being the most direct and surest way to progress in the way of holiness. I marveled as I realized how a God-centered spirituality simplifies our lives. "Thy will be done!" And, as we grow in the love of God, we become more and more detached of self and of the things of this world. My experience of life at the novitiate was a great blessing and I enjoyed it immensely. It has been compared to a time of courtship with the Lord, a time to fall in love.

Years of study at Ottawa (1938-1944)

Upon completion of my novitiate, I took my first vows the 4th of August 1937, on the feast of St. Dominic. The next day, the newly professed left for Ottawa and the Dominican House of Studies. Even before my first class in philosophy, I had had for a long time the presentiment that these studies would satisfy in me a deep hunger to know God and His works, the world and man. And I was not disappointed. I was a student eager to know.

I had excellent professors in philosophy and theology, as well as in Sacred Scripture, in particular, Fathers Regis in Metaphysics, Father Mailloux in Experimental Psychology, Father Brunet in Sacred Scriptures, etc. Even Metaphysics had a powerful way of lifting my mind and heart up to God contemplated as First Cause and creative source of all that exists. As such, He had to be intimately present in me. All those teachings delighted me. For me they were not abstractions, but the living reality of God present in me, of which St. Paul said: "In Him we have life, movement and our very being." All such thoughts placed me at the very center of my relationship to God.

Discovering Theology. I was soon enthused upon discovering the magnificent synthesis of theology presented by Thomas Aquinas in his "Summa Theologiae." What impressed me most is that everything, Dogma and morality, is centered in God. We come from God our Creator -that is dogma; we return to God through the free choices of our will -that is our moral life. Thanks to this Thomistic theology, I developed an intellectual and spiritual theology squarely God-centered and open to prayer and contemplation.

When I came to Ottawa, there was among the students and professors a marked interest in the contemplative element of our Dominican heritage. This is our Dominican heritage in its totality: first, to contemplate, then to share with others the fruit of our contemplation. "Contemplata aliis tradere." Our apostolate flows from our contemplation of God. There was here a healthy reaction against the "voluntarism" of another school of spirituality that put the accent on the human effort aided, of course by divine grace, to practice virtue and overcome our weaknesses.

Our intellectual horizons at the time, were limited. As young students, we lived in an ideal and abstract world. We then had no idea nor any preoccupation with the problems of the real world that some day we would have to face. But we had received a solid foundation to live a godly life.